


The Hitman's Pill

by leafiest_groves



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Depressing, Drinking, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Murder, Nursery Rhyme References, Suicide, The Author Regrets Everything, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:49:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26897713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leafiest_groves/pseuds/leafiest_groves
Summary: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘮, 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘴 𝘥𝘢𝘺.𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘮.𝘏𝘦 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘸, 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳.𝘈𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘴, 𝘈𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘴, 𝘞𝘦...𝘈𝘭𝘭...𝘍𝘢𝘭𝘭...𝘋𝘰𝘸𝘯
Comments: 11
Kudos: 3





	The Hitman's Pill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ellory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellory/gifts), [Ellegrine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellegrine/gifts).



The scream he looses is primal, a primitive cry of pain and fear, The fires are only growing. They are distracted by his vices, despite having sprung a trap of their own making. How much longer would he keep lying to himself?

His mistakes have caught up to him. The world may have been convinced he was a good man, but he knew better. The tales of the horrors life had thrown at him since childhood were not to be retold before the faint of heart. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw as an angry young man alone in the world. The realities of a lifetime of bad choices are before him now, clear as day.

Everything he has worked for is gone, his legacy-razed to the ground-remains only in his desperate search for the afterlife, for immortality has evaded him.

Alone, and rapidly spiralling downward, he contemplates, cigar raised to his lips in silence. The haze of cigar smoke in the rooms shines silver in the reflection of his tears, shining off of them like mercury. A deep drag and an exhale leaves a tendril of smoke coiling around him with the familiar touch of a lover.

The mere thought of lovers and their touch elicits a quiet, watery laugh from him. The words of his boyhood mentor come back to him with all the force of a cracked whip.

_"A man with the blood of so many on his hands is hardly a man suited for love."_

He had taken that to heart. The occasional mistress was all he had allowed himself.

How many decades ago had that been? The years blurred together. He was just an old man, alone in his misery, and his life was a series of struggles nobody should ever have had to undertake. It was too late now for anyone to care, not after the things he'd done.

_'Would they be disgusted now?'_ he wondered, thinking of the many dalliances that had warmed his bed. They had only ever served to entertain him. The hadn't loved him, they would never have stood by him as he was now, broken and frail and exhausted. 

_"Even the best racehorses only stay young for so long."_

Youth, youth...how one missed it's beauty and its futility only when it had abandoned them? A lover's touch is desired most when it is no longer yours to have, and he supposed that the same rules applied. Youth? His youth was tainted. Tainted by the single-minded mission to turn him into a killer. Memories of brass knuckles colliding with bone with a satisfying crunch, memories of the first shaky drags on a minor boss's pipe that left him sputtering, memories of target practice on living, breathing targets, memories of rushing to carry out hits, they washed over him then, like waves tumbling onto the shorelines of his consciousness. 

The pungent metallic stench of blood has followed him all his life. It's familiar and friend-like, unchanging in its place as a permanent figure in his dreary life. That stench has haunted him everywhere he went, a consequence of the life he led and the choices that added up to it.

Letting out a frustrated groan at the supremely unproductive turn his thoughts have taken, he pulls the cigar between his teeth and opens the solid gold globe in his office to pull out an unopened bottle of 1954 single malt.

Another low exhale leaves him wreathed in a halo of soft grey, and he appears for any who would bear witness to him at this lowest of lows to be a contorted, fallen angel, of limitless power and endless regrets. It all ends tonight. The cigar, practically finished, now lays discarded in his exotic ashtray of an orangutang's palm. He soundlessly tips the belladonna into his whisky.

The burn of the hard liquor is a welcome distraction from his quiet sobs when he knocks it back, and the he can tell that the belladonna is working, making him lightheaded and dizzy, dulling out his senses. None of it is enough to quell his pain, but he knows now, that after tonight, his heartsick aches will trouble him no longer. The belladonna isn't particularly pleasant, despite its sweetness, but it does make the cyanide pill go down easier. As he breathes his last quietly from the same chest that he breathed his first, staring aimlessly at his smoky office in a lazy leer, he starts thinking rather hysterically of a children's rhyme, and the darkness of the ironic is enough to force out one last weak chuckle from him, because he knows now, it truly is over.

_Ashes! Ashes! We...All...Fall...Down..._

**Author's Note:**

> Lord alone knows what possessed me to share a saga of an old man's goodbye to the mortal plane, but I do hope the sudden change in tone from my usual work isn't too much of a shock. This I give to my dear friend, who sat with me when I sketched out the barest bones of this work, and to dear Ellory, who I first gifted a piece to nearly a year ago, who I still very much admire.


End file.
